"Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis) runs the most popular video arcade in town, much to the chagrin of local businessman Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker). With his two bumbling nephews, Rutter aims to frame Bailey and have his business shut down. Bailey, however, is wise to Rutter's plan and teams with best buds Eugene (Leif Green) and McDorfus (Jim Greenleaf) to stop this scheme, which also involves a video game duel with punker King Vidiot (Jon Gries)." (Wiki)

Oh yeah, finally watched this great early 80s t&a comedy. This has it all: Great cast with so many familiar faces, fun characters, cute girls, smashing fashion, arcades to die for and lots of good tunes.

The best character is the arcade junkie McDorfus played by Jim Greenleaf who has a great cv.I also liked Corinne Bohrer´s Patsy, daddy´s girl with a rebel heart Of course Lola and Alva (Kym Malin and Kim G. Michel) is a very sexy pair and i really envy Scott McGinnis.

Lola and Alva teasing Eugene

I would´ve loved to hang around in a place like this

Overall a very good movie which takes you back to the days of joy and even Joe Don Baker who plays the villain is clearly having fun with the young cast.

The blu-ray includes interview with director Greydon Clark and he seems like a great guy who still enjoys his low-budget films.I have also seen The Return and Wacko. The next i´m going to check out is Uninvited (1988).
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posted 18. April 201607:45
I remember seeing Joysticks back in 1983 at the scuzziest grindhouse in downtown Minneapolis. I think that I've mentioned some of what the viewing experience was like before here on the Rewind, but it's fun to get nostalgic.

The Academy Theater was on a bad corner downtown and had a bus stop right in front of it and an alley to the side. Movies--exploitation double and triple features--would start at about 12:50 p.m. and run until about midnight. All the winos and homeless folks would come out from behind the trash dumpsters in the alley to go into the theater when it opened. The house lights never went up--the films ran continuously--so the street people would just sleep in the theater all day until midnight when they'd roam the streets again all night.

For kids today who are used to 3-D, IMAX, stadium seating, and exotic food in the lobby, the Academy was like something from a scary, primitive time. The lobby was lighted by one bare bulb under which the teenage ticket taker (not an usher because he never went into the theater) and concession stand girl congregated. At the concession stand, behind counter glass, were yellowing boxes of Dots and non pareil candies. Needless to say, you NEVER bought food at the Academy. The restrooms were in the balcony. You NEVER went to the restrooms at the Academy either if you valued your life. Downstairs in the auditorium, there were only about three seats--I knew them all--where you would not be overcome by the smell of urine, body odor, and booze or be poked in the behind by exposed seat cushion springs.

As for me, no matter if it were 100 degrees outside, I always wore a long scarf and looked pretty scruffy with my long hair and beard stubble. This was part of survival at the Academy. Looking as I did, many asked me if I had drugs for sale, but nobody threatened or otherwise bothered me.

Movies at grindhouses were a true experience. With urban renewal, home video, and different film distribution patterns, grindhouses are no more--which is a shame. I miss the excitement of the days when going to the movies was often more of an adventure than what was up on screen!

posted 18. April 201608:23
You think how much bang for your buck you was getting back in the day crash,what with double features even triple features,nowadays most people need a loan just to afford a tub of the popcorn before going in OK that's a bit of an exaggeration!

Crash can you remember many 80s double features and which movies were paired up with which?

Over here I can remember seeing Revenge Of The Nerds paired up with Bachelor Party at one of the theatre's!

Also I think many times the movies would have absolutely nothing in common like the above pairing of Visiting Hours and Escape From New York.
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Crash, if you ever write a book i will be the first one to get it! I feel ashamed watching these films on my cozy sofa Posts: 6271 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2008 | Site Updates: 7
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It is true, YW, that you really got your money's worth back in those days. I saw a triple bill of kung-fu features including George Lazenby in the Australian A Man Called Tiger, not to mention the numerous dusk-to-dawn drive-in shows. I remember going to one in the early 80s that had five films, only one of which I recognized, the original Night of the Living Dead. When I got there and saw them, I realized that they were all retitlings of old stuff like The Wizard of Gore, Don't Open the Window, and Horror of the Blood Monsters! That time, they got my money.

I just groan every time I go to see something in 3-D today. They not only charge you more, but they charge you for the glasses. And they expect you to recycle them. I never put them in the return bin. I paid for them! And we won't even go into the cost of stuff at the concession stand.

What movies were paired up on double and triple features is a great question. The days of official studio double bills with appropriate posters were pretty much gone by the late 70s. For example, if you were a horror fan, there were a few classic double features in the U.S.: Twins of Evil and Hands of the Ripper from Universal, 20th Century Fox had Countess Dracula and Vampire Circus, and Paramount released Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. And AIP had so many pairings. Gary Sherman's Death Line a/k/a Raw Meat was classic bottom-of-the-triple-bill. The newspaper ad always simply said "And Raw Meat. Rated R." They just tossed that film out there with zero fanfare. I don't think that I saw what the poster looked like until years later. ROFL Phantasm was a good second feature at drive-ins and grindhouses. AVCO Embassy got a lot of mileage pairing it up with stuff like The Howling and Escape from New York.
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posted 18. April 201611:42
Almost Pregnant is no laff riot but it's still good fun and worth checking out in my opinion!

I know what you mean atomik it's terrible,Dudikoff in the background looks like an overgrown 10 year old,thank God I own the original cinema poster.

Same as how they've wrecked the cover art to Nerds -

Crash that 5 film marathon and they retitled all the movies LOL there's no way on this planet that they would get away with that nowadays! I bet it made you laugh when you came away even though I imagine you also felt slightly p****d that you'd been duped into handing over your money!
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posted 18. April 201612:14
YM, when the first film started, and I identified it as Horror of the Blood Monsters--I don't even remember what the alternate title was spliced on the print--an Al Adamson/Independant-International turkey from over a decade earlier, I did actually laugh. And then The Wizard of Gore, also retitled, started. I'd also seen it before. At this point, I got out of my car and walked over to the projection booth. In the good old days, because the projector lamps burned using carbon arcs, there was a lot of really dangerous carbon dioxide that built up in the projection booth, so the projectionist was sitting on a chair outside the booth. We got to talking. I think we shared my six pack of cheap beer and some smokes. I told him how these were all ancient films retitled. I can remember that he looked at the ground and said, "These are some sh***y films. Sh***y films." We both laughed.

I didn't make it past Night of the Living Dead which was the third film--and only truly good one on the bill. (I think that film #5 was the badly censored American version of the very good Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, which I hadn't seen, but I was just exhausted. I finally caught up with it many years later when it got a special edition DVD box set from Anchor Bay. ) But I think that it was something like $5 a carload--just me that night--so I didn't feel too burned for the laughs I had. And I got a great story to tell all my film buff friends for over 30 years!

posted 18. April 201613:32
Being a projectionist back in the good old days sounded like pretty dangerous work,especially before anyone realised about the build up of dangerous carbon dioxide's Posts: 2645 | From: canterbury united kingdom | Registered: Mar 2011 | Site Updates: 0
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posted 18. April 201614:58
Indeed. I was a drive-in projectionist, and it was dangerous work. High voltage, fire hazards, dangerous gases... It wasn't like when you saw movies in high school, and the projector had a bulb. In the old two-projector 35mm system, you used a very high voltage to spark an arc between two carbon rods that then lighted a reflector. (Talk about a dinosaur system.) The burning of the carbon rods caused the carbon dioxide. If you shut the door to the booth and didn't have ventilation fans running, carbon monoxide would develop and silently kill you. Who said that the fringes of show business weren't dangerous!

Today, being a projectionist is a lost art. Theatre employees get the films on hard drives, program in all the run times for the 12-screen multiplex cinema, push "start," and walk away. The computer does everything from running all the commercials and trailers in order to turning the house lights up and down. (I've noticed in the newer U.S. theatres that they even have a glass window so that you can see all the electronics and computers as you walk to your particular screen. There is never anyone in that room.) That's why the state of film projection in theatres is so poor. I read an article that a director--I think that it was Michael Bay who went to see one of his Transformers films--was shocked at how dark the projected image was. When he inquired, he discovered that it is widespread practice that theatres were not switching in the right lenses to project 3-D movies because the system required a password, and everyone working was lazy and didn't want to call the theatre manager to get the password. So films today are being projected badly compared to the old days.

posted 11. May 201612:31
Clark's autobiography is excellent. He comes across as a real gentlemen and film lover, not just some hack out to make bucks putting out trash. His films, while bereft of budget--and sometimes on-screen talent--are still watchable and often highly entertaining. By far, he wasn't the worst exploitation director ever, and his anecdotes portray him as a real down-to-earth, practical guy when it came to filmmaking. He understood his own strengths and limitations and knew what he was shooting for. He hit his target most of the time. How many of us can say that about our own careers?
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